ON MEDIA.

TV's dirty (and violent) surprises -- the ads

From Janet Jackson to "Desperate Housewives," television standards were never scrutinized more closely than in the past year, but those raising the red flags on bad taste missed the biggest problem.

It's not the shows, because parents on top of their game can keep the kids away from programs whose content they consider inappropriate. If we're offended by curse words in any context, we steer our children clear of the TV showing of "Saving Private Ryan," and if we draw the line at high school boys sleeping with adult women, we swear off "Housewives" and "Life As We Know It."

The real problem is in the naughty bits that sneak up on even the most diligent parents. One such moment was the brain malfunction that shared Jackson's upper torso with the world during the Super Bowl halftime show almost a year ago. But that was an anomaly, a French Quarter peep show where there ought to have been no worse than lip-syncing and prefab pop.

The more typical sneak attack comes from the commercials, an area parents can't patrol and shouldn't be expected to. It draws almost no publicity, but time and again I have seen, and I have heard from readers incensed about, networks and stations allowing raunchy or violent ads in shows that ought to be fine for the whole family.

This was driven home to me a couple of years ago, when my older son, then 4, first got interested in watching the Cubs.

Picture this slice of Americana: Daddy is thrilled to be sharing the family ritual of televised baseball with his first-born -- and then comes the shockingly violent ad for the channel's upcoming airing of the shockingly violent movie "Scarface." It's moments such as those when you really regret not keeping the remote taped to your right hand.

This past weekend provided, all too predictably, many more examples of TV trash penetrating the protective pocket set up by otherwise vigilant parents. Saturday and Sunday afternoon and evening saw the National Football League playoffs, and a football playoff game, we can all agree, is unobjectionable, or as unobjectionable as grown men trying to pummel one another into submission can be.

And then comes the following ad: "I will use two grenades when one would work just fine," says a cartoon guy in military garb. A female character agrees that maximum carnage is a worthy goal: "I will flip a coin to decide which building to destroy -- and then blow them both up anyway."

This spot, for a video game called "Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction," aired twice during the AFC playoff game (Pittsburgh Steelers vs. New York Jets) Saturday on CBS. The darkly ironic kicker: According to the ad's voice-over, the game carries a rating called "Teen."

More typically, the problem isn't in the regular ads, a generally inoffensive parade of obtuse computer-services messages and pushes for oversize pickups. It's in the teasers for upcoming movies and shows, for instance on CBS, where the lineup is thick with crime series.

Saturday's spot for the show "Cold Case," seen frequently, featured scenes of brutal, bloody and apparently fatal boxing. "NCIS" spoke of "a murder heard over the phone." The new show "Numb3rs" showed a gun. A "CSI: NY" spot built up to a horse being rammed by a speeding car.

During the CBS pre-game show, the big-screen movie "Assault on Precinct 13" launched an assault on the viewing audience: at least one explosion, a big shiny knife wielded as a weapon and, by my quick count, 13 guns in 30 seconds.

You have to work very hard to cram that many firearms into one short ad, and you have to care very little to put it on broadcast television in midafternoon.

Sex, of course, got a workout too. While usual offender Coors had gone relatively tasteful, the German brew Beck's repeatedly pushed its beer with video of lithe women spilling out of near-thong bikinis (and this lovely slogan: "The trick is . . . always having something to drink to").

Then there was the actress in the latest Levitra ads. Doing her best to look and sound sexually satiated, she boasts of the drug creating "erectile quality" and "a strong, lasting experience." Then, of course, comes the now-famous voice-over "warning" that's really a selling point: "In the rare case an erection lasts for more than four hours, seek immediate medical attention."

Last year's Super Bowl was another case in point. Even beyond the Jackson flash, the football championship was strewn with advertising vulgarity. Horses passed gas, erections were promised, wives were caricatured as shrieking harpies, and grandparents beat the daylights out of each other over potato chips. Elsewhere in the infamous halftime show, Nelly spent his musical moment surrounded by strip-teasing "cheerleaders," grabbing his crotch and boasting about "looking for the right time to shoot [his] seed."

Perhaps most offensive was that this borderline pornography from halftime show producer MTV was meant to be part of the cable channel's get-out-the-vote message. Democracy: one long booty call.